> "No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board"

With 99.9% certainty this box is carrying on the legacy of the Deck and the Deck OLED, which means that it has a 100% custom crafted SoC with soldered components. Which also means they also could perform some trickery not found in "normal" PCs, like UDMA and custom interface.

> "but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality."

According to the specs it has a custom RDNA 3 chip w/ 28 CUs and boost clock at 2.45Ghz. The Playstation 5 has a custom RDNA 2 chip w/ 36 CUs @ 2.23 GHz and the Xbox Series X has a custom RDNA2 2 chip w/ 52 CUs @ 1.83Ghz.

Given the optimizations AMD made in RDNA 3 (the "budget" 9070XT can easily keep up with the prev gen "enthousiast" 9700XTX) I could make a safe bet it's on the same level of performance as a Playstation 5

> "No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is."

~7600X, ~RX7700, but like I noted earlier that's meaningless because the overall architecture of the hardware in this box is likely completely incomparable with a generic PC (just like with XBX and PS5, by the way)

According to [1], the RAM and SSD are upgradable.

* 16GB DDR5 SODIMM (upgradeable)

* M.2 2230/2280 NVMe SSDs

[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-machine-everything-we-know-a...

7900XTX not 9700XTX which didn’t exist.

9070XT is RDNA4 not RDNA3 and steam machine has 28CU’s on RDNA3 which is same as RX7400 the bottom of the range RDNA3.

The 7900XTX has 84 and 24GB of VRAM.

This is a strictly entry level last gen GPU, don’t expect miracles.

The hardware is not good unless the price is very cheap.

As for the 7900XTX been enthusiast only in the sense it it was the top of the line from AMD it’s about 4080 in some areas and loses badly in others (ray tracing), price wise it wasn’t far of the 9070XT price wise at launch.

I have a 7900XTX I like it a great deal but the 4090/5080 and 5090 crush it and the 90’s are enthusiast both on price and perf.

I ended up with a 7900XTX because nvidia pissed me off on Linux one time too many otherwise I’d have gotten the 4090 but between kernel installs causing pain (nothing insurmountable) and them straight breaking power management for nearly a year on mature hardware, nah, AMD deserved the sale, they really do support Linux better.

The Steam Deck AMD chip is rumored to be a design for the Magic Leap 2, not for Valve.

They said it's semi-custom discrete not a custom SoC. So basically it's a Ryzen 7400 + Radeon 7400.

Would this be capable of utilizing the ray/path tracing many games have now?